Weekly Poll: Print it Yourself or Professional Printer?

[prrs4me]

I use both methods. If I'm only printing a few I'll print them at home. If I need more I'll usually upload them to Costco or Wallmart. It is much cheaper to have them printed than to use my paper and ink. I occasionally use Shutterfly but unless they have a special, it's more expensive and I don't like the wait.

[daylebo5]

well i travel around a lot due to work.. so mostly my option is to get them professionally printed... just got a few done last week.. came out quite well...
Besides that .. i think its a hassle to maintain a printer.. so end up giving it out..

[praesentire]

I would love to be able to print my photos myself, but I'd rather save up for a new lens than a printer

[kkathy]

I went with professional printing, only because I don't have the means to print anything bigger than 4x6, photo quality, at home. Now if I could afford some big fancy photo printer things would be different.

[Jargon]

I always print the photos myself using my photo printer. I have different kinds of photo paper. I will only go to a printing shop if I want a poster-size print.

[Scik]

There is simply no better way to go than a professional printer.

Although, I do want to distinguish between a lab and a professional photography printer. A lab at your local WalMart, Costco, Sam's Club, etc that has the fancy machines that use software to edit your photos, has a team a teenagers who don't know ISO from DSLR, and, of course, cheap prints, is hardly a professional printer.

You will find when working with a lab that specifically works with professional photographers, you will get a much higher quality product. Also, the price is marginally different than that of the cheap places. I find its deffinetly worth that extra $1 for an 8x10 that is astounding vs. a cheap print that is just OK.

Professional Printers:
http://www.mpix.com/
http://www.bayphoto.com/
http://www.colorincprolab.com/

You will not be disappointed!

[ryan s]

If you do a quantity of prints, then you can't beat a "real" printer's price. New inkjet cartridges cost $20-$40, and don't last terribly long. You can take them to a camera shop and get different papers for the prints, as well.

My vote is to have someone else do them

And to the comment above...there are some people out there who work at "those places" who know what they are doing

[jiminyClickit]

Waiting for a delivery from mpix online printer, as an experiment to see if they really are better. Everything up to now has been on a Canon i960, $75 on ebay, NCR double-sided photopaper @ 25 cents a sheet, and cartridges under $3 at inkgrabbers.com. Replaced printhead after 2 years. An 8 x 10 for less than a dollar in under two minutes means mpix is going to have be very good.

[Synthea]

I have a HP Photosmart 3210 AIO that prints awesome professional photos and digital scrapbook pages, but when I want a lot of photos done, I use my printer, whcc.com

[smc1377]

When printing just a few prints, I'll use my photoprinter that I got at a great deal sometime back. It's a 6 ink system that does a pretty darn respectable job in the blind tests that I've done to coworkers and family members (printed at home vs walmart/walgreens type of prints vs ritz/wolf prints).

I've tried using cheap no-name brand ink once and noticed a signigicant drop in vividness. I'm not arguing against ALL no-name brand inks, just the one I tried. Then I realized that by buying ink straight from my printer's website, I could get ink for just about as cheap as the no-name brand kind, plus receive 100 free sheets of premium 4x6 photo paper, the choice was a no-brainer.

Then I a dye sublimation photo printer where it doesn't use ink in the printing process. It heats a sheet of film full of colored dyes that then transfers onto the paper and bonds with the paper. It feeds through the printer 4 times, each time applying a color (C, M, Y) then the 4th time, it applies a clearcoat that makes the print instantly safe to handle with fingers. And inherently, the prints are virtually waterproof since there's no ink applied.

And when needing anything in quantity, I'll usually upload the print to a local retailer to print.